


A Clean Slate

by amateurwordbender



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Natasha Romanov Feels, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Team as Family, a couple of fluffy memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-07 07:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18868120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amateurwordbender/pseuds/amateurwordbender
Summary: Clint’s no stranger to nightmares—as Tony would say, they’re an occupational hazard. But nightmares usually end when you wake. Not these. She’s still gone. Laura’s back, and the kids are back, and thank fuck for that, but they’re back because of Nat’s sacrifice. And losing her is just as unthinkable as it was losing them.(a funeral from five different perspectives)





	A Clean Slate

**Author's Note:**

> who else is going to be grieving until the black widow movie comes out? :)))) so I chose to write this sort of reflection of natasha's life from the perspectives of the other original Avengers just to get all of my post-endgame depression out and it ended up becoming way longer (and took way longer to complete) than I'd originally planned  
> a huge thank you to my two beta-readers for this fic, rukiachiha13 and a-cosmicchild on tumblr!

**Thor**

It is a far smaller affair than Tony’s.

Steve, Sam, and Bucky are here; the three of them cluster in a somber group as they arrive. Wanda speaks in soft murmurs to Clint’s youngest child, who sits on her lap in the grass, quiet and unnaturally solemn for such a small boy. Clint’s two older children sit beside her, leaning into each other. Clint stands with his wife a few paces away, his shoulders so still that it can only mean he’s forcing them not to shake.

Thor stands beside Bruce, a hand on his friend’s uninjured arm. He has a feeling that both of them are holding back from smashing something.

Mother. Father. Loki. Heimdall. Asgard and half of his people. Thor hadn’t thought he could possibly have room to hold more despair in his heart, but he was wrong, as he has been about so much lately. Natasha’s death hurts just as much as all the others.

Looking back, they doomed her the moment they decided to send her and Clint to Vormir. The cyborg lady had told them about the location of the Soul Stone with a grim countenance—even more so than usual, if that was possible—and none of them had been particularly excited to take on the mission. But before a real debate could break out about who to send, Natasha volunteered. After that, it was a given that Clint would insist on going along with her.

Nobody had protested. Natasha and Clint were the ones on the team who didn’t have superhuman powers or technological enhancements on their side, but anyone who’d met them knew that wasn’t a problem. They both possessed skill sets that were sharper and more polished than anyone in that room; they were the tightest team—Thor had witnessed them communicating without words and with absolute trust on both battlefield and home over the years; they were the most experienced in all matters of espionage, and it had only seemed natural that they would be sent to retrieve the Stone in the most dangerous location. It was strategic. It was logical. It was bullshit.

Clint told them, afterwards, about that everlasting exchange. A soul for a Stone, and it had to be someone you loved. Well, what if they hadn’t sent Natasha and Clint? What if they’d sent two people who were virtually strangers and therefore couldn’t complete a sacrifice of love? Perhaps they could have found another way to retrieve the Soul Stone then.

Or perhaps they wouldn’t have been able to retrieve it at all. Perhaps Natasha’s death had been truly, absolutely necessary to save the universe.

Thor knows, on some level, that it’s useless to agonize over what-ifs. And Clint says that she chose this, that this is the way she wanted to go—dying in order to save her family. But still, it’s not… it’s not _fair_ _,_  damn it. It’s not fair that after everything Natasha’s given up for this world, after everything she’s done to try and make up for her past, she still had to give all of herself.

There’s a hum of an engine, and Thor looks up to see a small plane winking into visibility. It lands among the trees a modest distance from the Bartons’ house, and Thor remembers a time not too long ago when Clint had brought them all here, touching the Quinjet down in that very same spot. Thor exchanges a glance with Bruce—it’s still unnerving to have to look _up_ to do so—and sees his own warring grief and sentimentality reflected there.

 

**Bruce**

The last time Bruce was here… he hadn't been in a good place. None of them had been. Wanda—who, ironically, is sitting a short ways away right now, as much a part of this family as any of them—had hit all of them but Clint with visions designed to tear them from the inside out. Bruce’s brought out a catastrophic Hulk attack. And Natasha’s dragged buried traumas to the surface that had rendered her the most shaken out of all of them.

A conversation followed. Nat opened up, and in that moment, Bruce had thought he was seeing the real her, without any masks or pretenses. He thinks that Natasha thought so, too.

“Fury.”

Bruce shakes himself out of his reverie, looking up at Steve’s quiet greeting. Sure enough, the last member of their little procession has arrived, stoic as ever. He’s carrying a large duffel bag. Fury nods to them, then sets down the duffel on a picnic table by the Bartons’ tool shed. Clint squares his shoulders and makes his way over—they must have arranged… whatever this is ahead of time. Bruce glances over at Thor, who gives a listless shrug. They all follow Clint to the table.

“These are all of the possessions she left in her security vault at the compound,” Fury says without preamble. Clint unzips the duffel. The rest of them know to give him a moment—even the kids don’t step forward. Clint doesn’t seem surprised by the contents, but Bruce feels something twinge in his chest.

“That’s it?” It’s Sam who speaks up, low and subdued in his disbelief.

The majority of the duffel is filled with weapons: her Widow’s Bites, knives, daggers, batons and escrima sticks, guns of all shapes and sizes, grappling hooks, a transparent bag with an assortment of makeup. Bruce isn’t sure which tubes of lipstick and powder palettes are real, which ones are poison darts in disguise, and which ones are a combination of weapon and accessory.

“She… she left more of her things at her safehouses. Or at home—here,” Clint answers, not looking up. His voice is rough, hoarse. It isn’t until Laura joins his side and touches his arm that he seems to remember the rest of them, and gives a small, reassuring smile to his kids. “These are the things that she would have stored right before…” He breaks off, expression carefully blank. “She would have kept these with her up until the last mission.”

Laura is the first to reach into the duffel, and she pulls out out a nondescript black folder from the bottom. She hands it to Steve, and he takes it, brow furrowed, but she just gives him a knowing look. She returns to the bag and sifts carefully through its contents, nudging Clint when she pulls out a small box that was probably white at one time, but has been yellowed and worn with use. The familiar way that Laura handles Natasha’s things echoes Clint’s movements. Bruce ducks his head, something bittersweet tugging at the corner of his mouth. The two of them, they know—they _knew_ Natasha; they knew all of her.

There was a time when he had thought they were moving towards something _more_ than friendship. And Natasha, she must have had some hope there could be something too, because he knows she didn’t deliberately manipulate him—she was never intentionally cruel. But after time and space—so much space—they both realized that Nat’s forced vulnerability, the flirting, the simpering voice… she was treating him more like a mark than a friend. Or at the very least, she was acting a role in a form of defense. Overcoming a fear of the Hulk and a fear of things she couldn’t control, not opening up.

But the thing was, once they both understood that and acknowledged it, Nat’s walls truly began to crumble. And in the year after the snap, when they were both still working at the Avengers compound, Bruce learned that he didn’t need or even want _more_ —friendship could be just as deep, just as wonderful, as whatever _more_ would have been.

Friendship was learning to play the old board games Tony had stocked in the living room, probably as a joke for Steve. It was Natasha trying to help Bruce with his social skills to no avail. It was Bruce trying to help her learn to cook “without Clint and Laura” to no avail—to disaster, actually—and settling on PB&J. It was lying on the ground with Tony, running solely on gallons of coffee and tea, Nat suddenly coming to a realization that was staring them all in the face, and ending the brainstorming session with laughs bordering on delirium.

Friendship was having real conversations, and watching her eyes soften as she talked about Cooper and Lila and Nathaniel. It was working through problems together and realizing they could both bring very different perspectives to the table—Bruce had scientific training, Natasha had a penchant for thinking outside of the box that eventually led Bruce to try and tackle his Hulk issues from a different angle.

Bruce doesn’t regret spending eighteen months in the lab to fix those Hulk issues. But god, if only he’d returned to the compound afterwards. He shouldn’t have left Nat there all alone; he should have tried to get to know her even more. Now it’s too late.

 

**Steve**

“Lila, sweetheart, this one’s for you,” Clint murmurs, nearly inaudible. He hands his daughter a crisp folder identical to Steve’s, but purple instead of black. Steve has a sneaking suspicion that it’s Lila’s favorite color.

Lila opens the folder and swallows at what she sees with a nod. She shuts it before Steve can tell what’s inside, and his heart cracks for the young girl as she swipes quickly at her eyes. Clint gives his daughter a one-armed hug and presses a kiss to the top of her head before looking up.

“Okay.” Steve can almost hear the shaky breath in Clint’s voice, even though he doesn’t actually let himself breathe. “Everyone ready?” Mumbles and nods of assent, and their little group starts towards the woods behind the house with the Bartons leading the way. Clint lifts Nathaniel into his arms as they walk, Cooper has his arm around Lila as she clutches the purple folder, and Laura holds the box she took out of the duffel bag with just as much care.

Steve doesn’t know Laura or the kids very well, but he can see how much they love Natasha in every halting step they take. If the Avengers were her family, the Bartons were her home.

After Clint revealed the secret to the rest of them during the Ultron debacle, Nat started telling Steve about Laura and the kids as often as she talked about Clint, and often in the same breath. She would update him on each and every one of Nate’s firsts, usually with videos. She would ramble about how Coop was acing all his classes and blowing everyone away with his intellect, how he was such a wonderful, protective older brother who clearly loved his siblings with all his heart even as he teased and fought with them. She would beam as she mentioned Lila bouncing from one sport to another, excelling at all of them but still liking archery best. She would practically gush about Laura working at the local high school as a guidance counselor, using her experience with loving two broken assassins to make a real difference.

The first time that Steve saw Natasha break down completely was after she found out Laura and the kids had been dusted. She told him about how she had distanced herself from them as much as she could, and how much she regretted that—becoming Auntie Nat instead of _Mom_ , because some warped part of her still felt she wasn’t fit to be a mother, no matter what Clint and Laura tried to tell her. Steve’s chest squeezes at the memory of her tears falling and shoulders shaking, the way her stuttered sobs had been ripped out of her throat as all he could do was wrap his arms around her and be someone she could let out her grief with.

His eyes are prickling, threatening to spill over once again. He’d thought it would be easier to think about Natasha’s relationship with the Bartons than to think about how much she’s impacted him. But the sleek folder in his hands is starting to burn, and everything hurts no matter what he does, so he might as well stop trying to delay the inevitable.

Steve opens the folder. His breath catches as he realizes what he’s seeing.

Drawing has always been a bit of a private hobby of his. Before the serum, he never deluded himself with dreams of making a living off of his art—at least, not in that economy. After the serum, well, there wasn’t much time to think about anything but the war and his role as Captain America. And after being thawed out of the ice… the world only saw him as one thing, and the world still needed him to step up. So he took up the mantle again, and since then, his life has been a cycle of fighting and running and trying to find a place in a time that doesn’t belong to him.

Still, he often finds the urge to put pencil to paper—a sketch here, a doodle there, a moment that he just has to capture on the page. Sam would always say that as coping mechanisms go, it’s a pretty good one.

Steve gave quite a few of his drawings to Natasha—they were perfect gifts for the friend who didn’t seem to need or want anything he could buy. Whenever he presented one to her, her lips would quirk into something fond, and she’d hold the piece of art like it was something precious, and warmth would fill Steve’s chest as her eyes lit up.

Apparently, she’d saved every single one of those pieces in this folder. Most of them have slight wrinkles in the corners, as if she would frequently look at them. There are a couple sketches of Natasha in situations mostly off the battlefield, several of her and Clint, a few landscapes of places she and Steve had both visited, and other miscellaneous things that he thought she would enjoy. One of his favorites is a full-color painting of Tony and Bruce slumped over each other on one of the couches in the Avengers Tower common area. Tony’s jaw is slack in a snore, Bruce’s glasses are askew, and they’re both inches from falling off of the couch. It’s not a flattering image of either of them. Natasha had offered one of her truly terrifying smirks when she received the painting, snapped a picture of it, and used the threat of posting it on Twitter to blackmail Tony into putting down his projects and going to bed more than once.

As Steve rifles through the contents of the folder, he finds things that he _didn’t_ give her, too. There’s a napkin with a bouquet of flowers doodled in the corner. A half-finished sketch of a skyscraper on the back of some faded takeout menu. There’s even a cartoon of Fury as a pirate on a sticky note that Steve doesn’t even recall drawing. For some reason, it’s this that makes it hardest for him to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

On top of the folder flap on the right side, there’s a smaller, clear pocket shaped like an envelope, and nestled inside is a photograph. Steve remembers Sam taking it—it was right after their first training session with the new recruits at the Avengers compound. The three of them were all walking together on the grounds outside, exhausted but hopeful about the future of the team. In the photo, Steve’s laughing at something Natasha said, his head thrown back and mouth wide in surprise. Nat’s arms are crossed over her chest, and she looks particularly smug, a wicked grin on her face. Somehow, neither of them had noticed Sam capturing the moment with his phone. It’s one of Steve’s favorite pictures. It seems like it was one of Nat’s, too.

 _God_ , he misses her. He misses the easy banter they always had, just as natural as his banter with Bucky or Sam, yet with its own unique flavor of morbid. He misses the way she always seemed to know what to say, even during those five long years when they were both mourning losses too great to carry alone. He misses watching her train with the same grace she would have when she danced.

He misses her subtle strength, her ferocity, her kindness, and now Bucky’s putting a hand on his shoulder, and he feels tears escaping, leaking, splashing into the grass.

_See you in a minute!_

Steve shuts the folder, looks to his left to see Bucky and Sam watching him, understanding in their silent support. He manages a smile, blinks away his blurring sight. It’s _wrong_ that Natasha isn’t beside them.

 

**Clint**

There had been no body.

Back on that stupid planet, once Clint had that stupid stone in his hand, he’d returned to the top of that stupid cliff. The stupid red floating guy was gone. And so was Natasha’s...

Clint swallows, trying and failing to scrub away the image of her twisted limbs, a pool of blood spreading like fire beneath her, a hundred feet below where he can’t reach.

He’s woken up in a cold sweat every single night since then, sometimes crying, sometimes gasping for breath, sometimes screaming until Laura shakes him awake. Sometimes Laura‘s the one waking up in tears.

Clint’s no stranger to nightmares—as Tony would say, they’re an occupational hazard. But nightmares usually end when you wake. Not these. She’s still gone. Laura’s back, and the kids are back, and thank fuck for that, but they’re back because of Nat’s sacrifice. And losing her is just as unthinkable as it was losing them.

Light filters through the leaves above as they enter the woods, and Clint looks up, resisting the urge to scowl. He and Laura decided to have the funeral among the trees precisely because it’s so beautiful, so serene, and had been one of Tasha’s favorite spots. But the way nature continues to teem with life feels like a cruel mockery of the hollowness in Clint’s chest.

In all their years of working side by side, back to back, Clint never thought Natasha would be the one to—of course, both of them have brushed up against death countless times in the field, and there have been close calls and accidents and tense hours upon hours waiting by SHIELD hospital beds, but they always managed to claw their way back to each other. And it’s not like Clint hasn’t frequently considered his own mortality and the fragility of life. It’s just that... Nat was always the best of them. All of them.

Clint has no doubt in his mind that she would have been able to beat any of them in a one-on-one fight—maybe not head on, maybe not hand-to-hand, but she was the most cunning and most resourceful, and if it came down to it, she would have found a way. Sure, Bruce held a record number of PhDs and Tony was a certified genius, but Natasha was the one who could read the average person’s entire life story from one conversation. She knew how to kill a man sixty ways with her hands behind her back. She could analyze any situation and turn it on its head so fast that she’d have the upper hand before you realized yours was slipping. Natasha was the survivor.

And isn’t it just so goddamn _ironic_ that it was her skill that had been her undoing? If Clint had just been faster, if she hadn’t been so fucking sharp... It was supposed to be him. But he should’ve known that there was no way in hell Natasha would have ever let him die.

Natasha is—Natasha _was_ his best friend. One of very few people in the world that Clint loved with whole heart. The first person that he trusted every bit of himself with, the first person who had seen his buried scars and knew him from the inside out and loved him anyway, even if it took her years before she could admit it. The very best part of him, until they met Laura and the final puzzle piece clicked into place.

When Cooper was about eighteen months old, Natasha was sent on a solo mission in St. Petersburg. She was sent because of her connections to the KGB, and god, Clint will never fully forgive Fury for convincing her to go alone without telling her family, security be damned. Things had gone south, she’d been cornered, and innocent people had died. Nat completed her mission, of course. She never failed a solo mission. But the price was too high, and she came back a little more broken than when she had left.

When she made her decision to step away from them, Clint and Laura knew her well enough not to push too hard for fear of pushing her even further away. Her guilt was the one thing as strong as her love, especially in those years before the Avengers. In retrospect, they made it all too easy—for legal purposes, Clint and Laura shared the name and the paperwork—by Nat’s suggestion, too. They should’ve known then that she never thought it would last for her. She always felt like she had to _atone_ , always thought happiness had to be fleeting.

Their family was never the same without Natasha’s constant presence, her teasing smiles, her unyielding strength. Of course, she didn’t leave completely. She tried, but Clint and Laura were understanding, and Nat always came back to them. The kids might have been Clint and Laura’s biologically, but he saw just as much of Natasha in them—in Cooper’s thoughtfulness and favorite books, in Lila’s cheeky grins and deadpan quips, in Nate’s determination in everything he did.

Lila and Nate grew up only knowing her as their aunt, though. Clint tried to convince himself that was enough, that with love and patience, she’d come around again, and they would be _whole_ again.

And then the snap happened.

Clint lost himself in a whirlwind of grief and vengeance, and Nat buried herself in Avengers work to cope. He knew why she never looked for him during those five years—it was the same reason why he didn’t look for her. Seeing each other would have made the loss too real, instead of being something they could call a nightmare that would end one day. It wasn’t until there was a real chance to bring them back that Nat sought him out. Clint doesn’t blame her for that. But he does blame himself for not going to her sooner, for not spending every second with her that he could. Too fucking late now, though.

Clint bites the inside of his cheek so hard that he tastes blood. He wishes Natasha was here with a longing so strong that it _aches_. But he can’t fall apart, not now, not while the kids are counting on him and Laura’s barely holding them all together. Not while he leads the service and has to properly honor Natasha with his eulogy in a few minutes. Not while—

“Dad?”

Clint startles as he realizes that Nathaniel is squirming in his tightening grip. He loosens it, and bounces Nate lightly, shifting him to his other arm. “Oh, I’m so sorry, bud.”

“It’s okay,” Nate says, solemnly patting his dad on the head.

Clint forces a smile. “We’re almost there.”

They arrive at a small clearing in the woods, one that Clint purposefully cultivated years and years ago as a space for him, Laura, and Natasha to sit while they watched Cooper and Lila playing in the woods—both he and Nat had insisted that the kids grow up as expert tree-climbers. To the right, there’s even a ropes course that Clint and Nat installed for Cooper’s seventh birthday.

To the left, beneath a sturdy oak, there’s a piece of white stone, thin and rectangular. It stands on a small pedestal—a memorial, not a gravestone, because there had been nothing to bury.

Laura squeezes Clint’s hand and passes him the box. He sets Nate down as everyone files into the clearing and stands in a semicircle around the stone.

Steve’s eyes are rimmed with red, and Clint looks away—if he meets Cap’s eyes, he’ll start crying and won’t be able to stop. Fury’s head is bowed, contemplative. Clint knows that the former SHIELD director has lost countless agents, but Natasha was like a daughter to him. Clint’s breath hitches in his throat as he hears his own daughter sniffle, and he opens his free arm to her. Lila steps up to him gratefully, tucking her face in his shirt.

She was always closest to Natasha, ever since she was baby and took her first steps into Nat’s arms. The boys loved her too, of course—loved her like a third parent, which in all the ways that counted, she was. But Coop had grown a bit disillusioned from the novelty of his dad and Auntie Nat being superheroes a few years ago. And Nate’s only three—he barely got the chance to really know Natasha.

Lila, on the other hand, had idolized her. Lila would spend every second she could of Natasha’s frequent but never-long-enough visits to the farm glued to her side, practicing non lethal defensive techniques with her, pestering her with questions, and chattering away to an endless patience and tenderness in Tasha’s eyes.

Clint runs his hand through Lila’s hair, giving her all the time she needs. The others stand patiently too, until she reemerges, exhales slowly, and goes back to Cooper.

Clint steels himself, then opens the box. Inside, a silver necklace rests on a small cushion. The arrow pendant glimmers in the sun.

_“What’s this?” Natasha watches him approach her where she’s sitting on the hotel bed with amusement glinting in her eyes. Clint tries to seem nonchalant, and maybe it would have worked with anyone else. But he is absolutely certain that she can tell exactly how nervous he is just by sweeping her gaze across his movements once._

_“Little celebration gift for our first official success as Strike Team Delta,” he says with a grin. He doesn’t mention everything else that comes with that—it’s a year after Clint first brought her in, and it’s Natasha’s first time working as an official SHIELD agent, the official start of her new life going straight. It also happens to be about six months since the first time they kissed._

_They’re not_ together, _in the traditional sense of the word. Nat still gets skittish around any implication of a romantic relationship. But Clint doesn’t mind; what they have is just fine. A partnership, a friendship stronger than anything he’s experienced before. An understanding of each other that grows with each day. Hopefully, she’ll understand that this gift is just a symbol of that. He’s not trying to rush her, not trying to make her uncomfortable or anything…_

_“Earth to Hawkeye,” Natasha says, teasing. He blinks, letting out a sheepish chuckle._

_“Right, right.” He sits down next to her on the bed, and she shifts so that she’s sitting cross-legged and facing him._

_He hands her the box, and she opens it, revealing the simple necklace inside. Her face goes blank, unreadable. Clint tries not to panic. “It’s—it’s just something I saw in Budapest that I thought you might like. It doesn’t have to mean anything; you don’t have to—”_

_Natasha looks up, and Clint startles to see her eyes welling up for a moment before she blinks, hard. She swallows and reaches out her hand. Clint squeezes it gently, meeting her eyes and holding her gaze. He feels honored every single time she lets herself show a bit of vulnerability with him._

_She clears her throat, and the moment’s over. Natasha takes out the necklace, pretending to examine it with a critical eye. “Bit egotistical, don’t you think?”_

Clint kneels by the stone, placing the necklace on the upper right corner. He looks over at Wanda and nods. She gives him a melancholy smile, then raises her arms. The stone is enveloped in her power, and the chain of the necklace sinks in, until only the pendant is visible, resting over the engraving of Natasha’s chosen name.

Clint stands and faces the rest of their group. Grief is written across each and every one of their faces, but for a moment, he feels his heart soar. Tasha changed so many lives for the better while she was here. He takes a deep breath, and begins.

“Natasha was more than just my best friend…”

 

**Tony**

“It’s nice. This guestlist. The whole exclusive, must-be-at-least-a-level-five-friend thing. Classy.”

“Oh, shut up, Stark.” The fact that Natasha’s retort lacks any of her usual wit and patented bite speaks volumes.

Tony doesn’t know how this afterlife works yet. Probably something to do with the Stones—it doesn’t matter. There will be, well, an eternity to figure it out. For now, he’s just grateful that he’ll get to watch over Pepper and Rhodey. See Morgan grow up in a world without the threat of Thanos. Watch Peter evolve into the incredible young man he’s becoming. And Tony’s honestly glad that he gets to do it with Natalie Rushman herself, triple imposter extraordinaire, who has somehow become more dear to him than either of them would have ever been willing to admit in life.

They sit quietly for a bit, side by side, but he’s never been particularly good at silence, and he doubts she’s surprised when he breaks it. “So. You and Clint and that secret wife of his, huh?”

At this, Natasha turns to him, lips quirked. “My family. Or the first members of it, anyway. The rest of you—you all joined that roster eventually.”

Tony doesn’t comment on the moisture making her eyes shine and silently places an arm around her shoulders. He’s risking decapitation, but what’s the harm when he’s dead already? Instead of testing that theory, Natasha hesitates for half a second, then leans into him, resting her head against his shoulder. She takes a breath, slow and almost steady.

Over the years, she’d been there for him in ways he hadn’t fully realized until now—gentle and nearly honest words in a moment of crisis on his birthday, a knowing look exchanged when they were all recovering from their scuffle with aliens in New York, a commiserating touch during the mess that was the Accords. It’s nice that Natasha’s letting him return the favor now.

“They’re going to be okay, you know,” Tony murmurs. It was what Pepper had promised him in those final moments. Her last gift to him—she’d already given him his second chance at life, given him more joy than he could have imagined, and then she gave him her blessing to move on in peace. _You can rest now._

“I know,” Natasha says, the words almost inaudible. There’s something unreadable in her gaze as she looks down at the people she loves. “They all have each other.” She glances over and smiles then, and the smile wavers, but it isn’t fake. Tony can finally tell the difference.

He returns it with a small, halfhearted grin of his own. “Look at us. Afterlife’s turning us sappier than Cap.”

The sun begins to set in the world below, illuminating the trees in soft shades of gold. Tony rests his head on Natasha’s. He hopes she understands, now. It shouldn’t have taken her death to prove it, but it’s clear. There’s no debt, not a drop of red left in that ledger. The proof is in the people she left behind who will hold her in their hearts forever.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m still very new to writing for the mcu, so any tips or feedback on how well/poorly I’m writing the characters’ voices would be much appreciated!  
> the next fic I’m planning on rolling out will be slightly less angsty and have a few more fluffy (or at least feel-good) moments in it—it’s centered on steve’s friendship with nat and his perspective on clint(laur)asha, so stay tuned for that if you’re interested


End file.
